Remaking Us

Do you know that the brain is a master of illusion?Take the faculty of vision, for example. What we see with our physical eye is actually backwards & upside down as well as being inaccurate in about 25 other ways. The brain has to “edit” or turn it around and fill in bits so that we can function on the world. Like the blind spot on the retina that we “fill in” with made –up stuff that is conjectured from the other parts of the picture that we can see. We “fool ourselves” in other ways, like in experiencing events as simultaneous that our brain is registers as juxtaposed—the time lag in way nerves register things. It’s amazing the things the brain has to coordinate to keep us functioning; about 200 or 2000 factors working in concert just for ONE simple connection.Memory is very selective— what is remembered depends on how a question is asked. Current experiences are generally over-rated, while those from the past are under-rated. As for events of high emotional impact, it is remembered that they happened, but not the details. The intensity of both good & bad memories fades with time. This is amazing— not so different than you may have already suspected—that we highly suggestible beings. People’s memories are found to be very inaccurate, and how accurate a person thinks their memory is tells you nothing about how accurate their memories actually are!